I would like to open/start this thread by myself.
I think that the computer section here is a little bit slow and lacks of such kind of threads. I thought about opening a thread that involves critical thinking concerning any subject related to computers and technology.
This thread is intended to share ideas, information, thoughts and enlighten on some facts that some people doesn't know, that some people aren't really aware of.

This thread is not a game, but it has some rules.The rules are that the author should not copy an article form a source and throw it here without mentioning his thoughts and showing his critical thinking toward the subject he's writing about. Because this thread isn't meant to be an RSS feed engine for people to read. It is basically, like the tittle says, a bit of thinking. Also, the readers might discuss the subject and the ideas mentioned by the author and try not to go off topic!

Note that you don't need to be a computer nerd to write here. Subjects should not be fully-technical. Just make sure you have some logic and common sense before you post.

Early morning, you turn on the PC and go ahead to check you hotmail Inbox. You found out that the email account is not opening! You re-checked 1,2,3,4...,n times and yet you are unable to log-in.
You knew then that your Hotmail email account was hacked!
Taking the worst case scenario. You forgot the secret answer for the secret question and you haven't set an alternative email account address OR the hacker have changed the secret answer and the alternative email account address. You don't have hacking skills, you don't know a friend hacker and you contacted Hotmail but they didn't replied. => Therefore, there is no way for you to get back your stolen Hotmail account!

Don't panic.
There is a workaround for this problem. But you must get back in time.
Look at this picture. How many options did you tried so far?

Don't you think that there is an option you missed?
In fact there are 3 options and you only considered them as 2!
How about sending a password reset message to the same stolen email?! Sounds odd, no?
It might sounds odd yes, and you will complain that you won't be able to read the message since you're not able to access the account itself (holding the message). So what? What's the point?

Have you ever tried the email forwarding option provided by Hotmail?
Allowing such an option will forward all the received messages to another email account chosen by the user.
So when you choose the option that sends a reset confirmation message to the same stolen email, the message will be automatically forwarded to the email account you entered when you applied the email forwarding option.
Therefore, you are now able to reset your password and recover your stolen email.

Believe me and believe my statistics, 95% of hackers (or better if I say email hijackers) don't check this option, they just ignore it. They will be enjoying changing the secret answer and the alternative email account address.

The process is so simple:
1- Create a secret email account.
2- Set your Hotmail account to forward messages to it.
3- Use it to recover you Hotmail account in case it was stolen.

The email forwarding option is listed under the account settings.

Now I'm not finished yet. This trick has some disadvantages.
Microsoft doesn't allow data duplication and yet their mail service is slow. Nowadays, they are facing congestion. You can use Google to find more about this issue. Sometimes I'm not able to log-in.

When you're configuring the mail forwarding option, you will notice a sentence saying:
"Note: Forwarded messages are deleted from this account."
This means that you can't keep a copy of the received messages! So if you want to see the messages you've received, you need to log-in to the new account where the messages are forwarded.
Also, because Microsoft sucks. It implies that the receiving email account should be one of the Microsoft family (hotmail.com, msn.com, live.com, or is part of Windows Live Custom Domains).

On the other hand. If you are an owner of a Gmail account. You have the option to forward your received messages to any account + You can keep a copy of these received messages + Gmail is much faster.

Wait. I'm not advertising Gmail. I'm mentioning some differences. It is up to you what to choose, depending on your needs.

At the end. I do need to ask a question. Why Microsoft made the "sending reset confirmation message to the same email" option? Did they counted the trick I mentioned here? Or what?!

Why Microsoft made the "sending reset confirmation message to the same email" option? Did they counted the trick I mentioned here? Or what?!

absolutely, this is not a tricky way of changing the password. but to make use of it with microsoft, you have to use one email as your address and forward all mails to another email used as your login.
this way, you can also protect your emails from being read by the hijacker.
note that you will also use the address account as the only account to compose messages from, and keep the login account as secret as your password.

absolutely, this is not a tricky way of changing the password. but to make use of it with microsoft, you have to use one email as your address and forward all mails to another email used as your login.
this way, you can also protect your emails from being read by the hijacker.
note that you will also use the address account as the only account to compose messages from, and keep the login account as secret as your password.

This is a trick for sure. I didn't see anyone use it before.
And Microsoft didn't make that option available for you to apply this trick.
Why the hell would Microsoft allow email duplication (so that each Hotmail user would have 2 emails, one for recovery and one for usage) while it doesn't allow message duplication and it experience slowness and congestion. So no, this option wasn't made for this trick.

I'll tell you why it might be made. How many times people create their email account and directly forget what did they put as password?!
I know that this is a little bit silly and unexplainable but believe me, this happens so often. So when they are in, they can request a reset confirmation message.

I want to benefit from this thread also to launch other vector of thinking.
Making it short. If any member here has a project in mind and would like it to be implemented, he can share it here.
After sharing the project, I and other people might study it and accept to implement it if it was original, good and feasible. We might form teams or whatever.

a bit of thinking..
have you ever downloaded a rar file that is password protected and you found out that you know shit about the password?
take the link and paste it in google search.
i've helped many people using this, it even happened with me many times.

few people thought about this before.

__________________
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I'll tell you why it might be made. How many times people create their email account and directly forget what did they put as password?!
I know that this is a little bit silly and unexplainable but believe me, this happens so often. So when they are in, they can request a reset confirmation message.

Most of the people just use the "Remember Me" & "Remember My Password" options so they might forgot their password easily ... it happened a lot with people i know !!
So i think that's probably why this was made by microsoft !!
And you're right dude ... it's not in microsoft's benefits every hotmail user to have more then 1 account !!